1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display device such as a liquid crystal display device or an electrophoretic display device and to the driving method thereof. In addition, the present invention relates to an electronic appliance including the display device such as a liquid crystal display or an electrophoretic display device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Display devices using an electrophoretic element (also called electrophoretic display devices) have attracted attention as display devices capable of being driven at low power. The electrophoretic element is one the principle of which is the movement of charged particles caused by an electric field, and is capable of maintaining a state of the particles for extremely long periods of time as long as an electric field is not generated. Display devices using an electrophoretic element capable of holding an image for a long period of time have been expected to be display devices for displaying a still image such as an electronic book and a poster.
Since display devices using an electrophoretic element are quite promising as display devices with an extremely low power consumption as described above, their various structures have been proposed so far. For example, an active matrix display device in which a transistor is used as a switching element of a pixel has been proposed as in the case of a liquid crystal display device or the like (see Patent Document 1 for example). The display device using an electrophoretic element disclosed in Patent Document 1 employs a technique to rewrite an image in which an image is erased (hereinafter also called the initialization of an image) and then a new image is displayed by setting all the pixel electrodes at the same potential and applying a voltage between a common electrode and a pixel electrode.